Soaring High
MARCELLUS AND ELIZABETH MEDINA’S RECENTLY COMPLETED STORAGE JAR FEATURES 96 BIRDS, THEIR DESIGNS HONORING ZIA TRADITION.
Marcellus and Elizabeth Medina’s recently completed storage jar features 96 birds, their designs honoring Zia tradition.
Trinidad Medina (circa 1894-1969) of Zia Pueblo was the most celebrated potter of her time, demonstrating pottery making at venues across the country including the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago in 1933. Today, her great grandson Marcellus Medina and his wife Elizabeth carry on the distinguished Zia artistic tradition. Marcellus continues to consult Trinidad’s sketchbook. His mother gave Elizabeth one of Trinidad’s polishing stones which she uses on her own pots.
Elizabeth was born at Jemez Pueblo and, following tradition, moved to Zia when she married Marcellus. She had made pottery with her mother at Jemez. When she was accepted as a tribal member of Zia she was allowed to make the Pueblo’s traditional pottery, leaving behind all the Jemez traditions. She adopted Zia’s different style and learned to work with its different clay. Clay is gathered from secret sources at the Pueblo. It is tempered with other materials such as sand or pulverized pottery to give it more strength. At Zia, the clay is kaolinite and the temper is volcanic basalt, ground down to a fine powder. The clay is more difficult to work and heavier than the clay she used at Jemez.
She developed her skills with her mother-in-law Sofia Medina (1932-2010) who was known for her large ollas. Zia potters were acclaimed for their large vessels but were discouraged from making them for the tourist trade because of their size. They continued to make them for daily and ceremonial use. Elizabeth continues to make large storage jars and Marcellus paints them with his contemporary take on traditional decoration.
Lyn Fox of Lyn A. Fox Fine Pueblo Pottery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, recently showed me a 16-by-16-inch storage jar painted with 96 birds recently completed by the couple. The birds honor Zia tradition and the work of Trinidad, Sofia and Elizabeth and his sister Lois, their designs marked with a series of dots.
Marcellus explains that the red area at the bottom of the pot signifies “what’s underneath us, the earth from which we emerged. The middle area is the world we live in today and where I honor the ladies and grandmothers going back through history. The opening at the top is where my people emerged from Mother Earth, and the two black lines signify the heavens.”
In addition to honoring the generations of potters in the middle band of the pot, Marcellus has painted what he calls “baby birds” above them and below the rim. “They are a representation of my family and who we are as a people. Knowledge is passed down from one generation to the next. That’s how our people survived. When the grandchildren grow up to be grandfathers they will continue to teach their own grandchildren.”
Marcellus has drawn from Trinidad’s sketchbook, his own childhood sketchbooks and from the work of his family members and other potters in homage to them and to the history of Zia. The rain birds are decorated with parallel and cross-hatched lines to represent rain and are a prayer for life-giving rain and moisture in the dry high desert. A pattern of dots within the body of the bird represents snow. Other patterns represent the four directions as in the checked pattern. Two white circles represent a female bird with her eggs. In addition to portraying birds in the traditional designs of the Pueblo, Marcellus also draws from his life
experience and from “what I see in my premonitions that come from the spirits of the universe.”
He explains that the colors themselves have their own significance: black representing power and magic and red representing Mother Earth, life.
One of the bird designs in his sketchbook comes from a sherd he saw on the ground when he was a boy. Since sherds must be left where they are found (a heads up for all of us), he memorized the design, ran home and drew it in his book. He and his brothers would go hunting and he almost always carried a notebook to sketch the ancestral designs of deer and other animals he found on the petroglyphs.
Marcellus relates that when his people emerged they sent out birds to survey the world. They first came back indicating Mother Earth was nothing but water. When the final bird came back with a leaf, the people knew the world was beginning to dry. Since the beginning, the people have honored birds as “messengers to the spirits to bring thunder, lightning, rain and snow. We also ask Mother Earth to release some of her water.”
The earliest representations of birds by “the ancient old ones” were less representational than those that began to emerge later. The triangular birds Marcellus has painted on their pot date from around the 1300s and go back even farther.
“Pottery is the foundation of my people,” Marcellus explains. “Mother Earth allows us to use from her body. We give offerings to her such as corn and feathers we put in a pot and then place out in the wilderness.”
The New Mexico Bowl, an NCAA sanctioned post-season football game, began in 2006. When the organizers went to the Zia tribal leaders for permission to use Zia’s sun symbol in their logo, the leaders granted permission and encouraged them to use Zia artists to make the bowl trophies. Each year, Elizabeth and Marcellus have created a 20-inch water jug for the award. Marcellus decorates the pot with traditional symbols and, after the competing teams are announced, adds images relating to both teams.
The artists are rooted in and masters of tradition but bring their work into the 21st century with innovation.